Curly Bill and Ringo (19 page)

He reined in, grinning at the man in black, and said, “Howdy.”

Ringo pushed his hat back on his head and looked at Hoodoo out of cold blue eyes.

“G-G-God, it’s Ringo!” Hoodoo stammered. “You’re d-dead!”

“You ought to know, Hoodoo,” Ringo said. “You helped kill me.”

Wyatt chuckled and Hoodoo saw him for the first time.

“G-God! W-Wyatt Earp too!”

“Pike send for you, Hoodoo?” Ringo asked.

“N-no,” Hoodoo gasped. “Pike don’t even know I’m here. Bear don’t neither. They wasn’t at the ranch, so I guess they’re in town, if they ain’t somewheres else.”

Ringo was studying Hoodoo’s old sack coat. “That’s a real nice coat you’ve got there, Hoodoo. How’d you like to trade it for mine?”

“S-sure, Ringo,” Hoodoo said, with a nervous smile, “But I ain’t got no boot to give you. I’m flat broke.”

“That’s all right, Hoodoo,” Ringo said, getting to his feet. “Step down and take off your coat.”

“S-sure, Ringo,” Hoodoo said, awkwardly swinging down and shucking out of his coat. “You want my pants too?”

“That’s all right, Hoodoo, you can keep your pants,” Ringo said. “But while we’re at it we might as well trade hats.” He reached for Hoodoo’s old slouch hat and put his black hat on Hoodoo’s head. He adjusted the hat on Hoodoo’s head at a certain angle and straightened the black coat on Hoodoo. Then he stepped back to admire the transformation. “You look like a new man, Hoodoo. But you want to be careful. If old Pike sees you coming in that outfit he might think it’s me.”

Hoodoo managed a sickly laugh. “He thinks you’re dead, Ringo.”

Hoodoo started to get back on his nag, but Ringo said, “Take my horse, Hoodoo. You need a black horse to go with your new coat and hat.”

“Well, if you want me to, Ringo,” Hoodoo said uncertainly, looking at the beautiful black. “You sure it’s all right?”

“Sure, go on, Hoodoo,” Ringo said. “I want you to be riding in style when Pike sees you.”

“Well, if you don’t mind,” Hoodoo said, and climbed on the black horse. He looked down at Ringo from the expensive hand-tooled saddle, unable to comprehend such generosity in a man who looked so hard and merciless. “You sure there ain’t no hard feelings, Ringo?”

Ringo made a little gesture of dismissal, his eyes cool and remote. “Not anymore.”

“Well,” Hoodoo said, still not knowing what to make of the situation, “so long, I guess.” He looked over at the blond fellow and bobbed his head respectfully at him. “Wyatt.”

Wyatt casually lifted his hand, but said nothing.

Hoodoo kicked the black horse into motion with his heels and trotted over the hill, convinced that his luck had finally changed. Ringo had not only let him live, but had given him this beautiful black horse for his old plug, and the fine black hat and coat for Hoodoo’s worn-out garments. The new horse and clothes had a profound effect on Hoodoo, and he sat tall and proud in the saddle, feeling and looking like a new man. Wait till old Pike saw him.

Pike was even then watching him through the sights of his rifle, slowly taking up the slack on the trigger, a wolfish grin on his face. Pike’s eyes weren’t the best, and at a distance of two hundred yards the man on the black horse looked to him like Ringo. He had no reason to suspect otherwise. As far as Pike knew, Hoodoo was still in Texas or someplace, and the farther away the better.

The rifle roared and the man on the black horse pitched out of the saddle and lay still. The horse trotted on a short distance and then stopped.

Pike got his horse and galloped toward the dead man, yelling in wild exultation, “I got you this time, Ringo! And I aim to make sure you stay dead!” He halted fifty yards away and levered three more bullets into the man’s body. Then he rode up and dismounted, his yellow teeth bared in a grin. He bent down and roughly turned the man over and stared down into Hoodoo’s lifeless face.

Then Pike’s wild eyes darted in every direction, for he knew he had been tricked. They couldn’t fool old Pike. “Over here, Pike,” Ringo’s voice called from behind a boulder.

Pike cried out in terror and fled in the other direction. He scrambled behind a rock and levered a shell into the chamber of his rifle, getting set to make a desperate fight for his life.

But just then he felt the muzzle of a gun pressed against the back of his neck and a quiet voice said, “Drop it, Pike.”

The rifle clattered to the ground and Pike peered over his shoulder into Wyatt Earp’s deadly blue eyes. “I knowed I wasn’t drunk enough to see double back there! I figgered you and Ringo was workin’ together, just like before!”

“Maybe this time. Not before.”

“You can’t fool me!” Pike said, sounding mighty indignant about it.

“No one was ever fast enough to fool you, Pike,” Wyatt said. “You always beat them to it. Got the job done all by yourself.”

“Shoot me and get it over with,” Pike said.

“Wish I could oblige you, Pike. But it wasn’t in the cards.”

Wyatt caught hold of Pike’s collar and marched him out into the open, keeping the Buntline Special jammed in his back. Then he released him and pushed him toward Ringo, who had also stepped into the open.

For a time Ringo just stood there, straight and tall, without a hat or coat but indifferent to the raw wind whipping his copper hair about his temples, and studied Pike in silence. His eyes were like blue ice, but there was no particular expression on his smooth hard face. Wyatt figured he was trying to decide what to do with Pike.

Then Ringo holstered his gun, and silently nodded at the gun in Pike’s holster. Wyatt moved quickly out of the line of fire.

Pike suddenly seemed to wilt, his bravado deserting him. “I ain’t gonna draw on you, Ringo!” he cried in a trembling voice, his eyes jumping with fear.

Ringo’s jaw had set. “That’s up to you, Pike,” he said quietly. “I intend to kill you whether you draw or not.”

Pike shook his head desperately, sobbing like a scared and bewildered child, and unbuckled his gunbelt and tossed it to the ground. “You wouldn’t shoot a unarmed man, Ringo!”

Ringo’s eyes got colder and colder, until Pike could no longer meet them. He probably knew Ringo was thinking about how they had bushwhacked him, and Ringo’s silence seemed harder for him to bear than bitter curses and threats would have been.

Then Ringo deliberately drew his gun, cocked it and aimed it at Pike’s face.

Pike cried out and fell to his knees and said in a pleading voice, “Don’t kill me, Ringo, for God’s sake!”

Ringo’s jaws were clenched so tight that they swelled out in murderous hatred and his chest rose and fell. He gripped the cocked gun in his hand until it trembled, reducing Pike to blubbering terror. But the moments passed and Ringo didn’t pull the trigger. Finally he seemed calmer and there was even a kind of peace in his face, as if he had won some important struggle with his own violent nature. He looked at the astonished Wyatt and said, “He’s just not worth it.”

“Maybe he’s not worth it,” Wyatt said. “But speaking for myself, I can’t afford to leave him alive. Not after he’s seen me. He’d tell Curly, and pretty soon the whole world would know.”

Ringo shrugged and holstered his gun. “You do as you like with him. It doesn’t make any difference to me. He needs killing. But I’m not going to kill him unless I have to.”

“It won’t bother me any,” Wyatt said coldly. “Not after what he did to my brother.”

Pike swung his head around and looked at Wyatt as if shocked by the suggestion that he, Pike Lefferts, could do such a thing. “I never had nothin’ to do with that!” he cried hoarsely. “I wasn’t nowhere near there when it happened!”

“That’s what they’ve all said,” Wyatt grunted. “Every single one I’ve talked to.”

“It’s the God’s truth, Wyatt!” Pike cried. “Me and the boys was down in Mexico rustlin’ cows when that happened!”

“That I could believe—at any other time,” Wyatt said.

He looked at Ringo. “That’s how it’s been with everyone I talked to. Known stage robbers volunteered the information that they were holding up a stage at that very moment, but swore it was the only time they ever did anything like that in their whole lives.”

“Naturally,” Ringo said.

Pike must have figured that was the best chance he would have, slim as it was. He dived for the gunbelt he had thrown to the ground. He grabbed the gun and was jerking it out of the holster when Wyatt lifted the Buntline Special and shot him through the body. Pike flopped over on his back and lay there breathing with difficulty, not even trying to locate the gun that now lay beside him.

When Wyatt and Ringo drew near, he looked up at them with his yellow teeth bared in a sickly grin. He no longer seemed angry or bitter at either of them. “I don’t know how you got the idea I shot your brother, Wyatt,” he said, “but it don’t matter none. The minute I saw old Hoodoo lyin’ there I knowed my goose was cooked. If one of you boys hadn’t killed me it would of been someone else. Hoodoo never had nothin’ but bad luck and he spread it around wherever he went. I always knowed he’d get me killed one way or another.”

Those were the last words Pike Lefferts ever said. His dark eyes widened in a kind of panic and then stared off without seeing in two different directions.

“It’s going to make old Pike mighty uneasy if Hoodoo’s face turns out to be the first one he sees when he gets to hell,” Wyatt said, idly twisting the end of his mustache. “He’ll know his goose is cooked for sure then.”

“With Hoodoo and Pike down there, I think I’ll try to avoid the place as long as I can,” Ringo said. “I don’t think I’d much like doing a long stretch with them.”

Wyatt cocked one eyebrow at him. “I sort of doubt if they’d get a kick out of it either.”

“Probably not.” Ringo was looking thoughtfully down at the dead man. “Why do you think he said he didn’t have anything to do with it? He knew he was dying anyway.”

“I don’t think he knew which brother I meant,” Wyatt said.

“I guess not,” Ringo said, turning away. “Well, I’m glad it’s over anyhow.”

He went to where the dead Hoodoo lay, got his hat and dusted it off. His black coat was riddled with bullet holes and covered with blood and he left it on the dead man. He went to his horse and checked the cinch.

Wyatt stood watching him a moment in silence and then said, “I guess you don’t want any company? I wouldn’t mind riding along a piece. I got nothing better to do.”

Ringo kept his back turned as he said, “I don’t think you’d much like it where I’m going.”

“Where’s that?” Wyatt asked. Ringo didn’t answer and Wyatt smiled a little. “Back to hell?”

“Not till I have to,” Ringo said. The wry ghost of a smile touched his own lips. “But I guess it could still work out that way. I think nearly everyone in town would like to put a bullet in me. They all seem to hate my guts. That’s quite an accomplishment, when you consider that I’ve only been there a few days and haven’t spoken to more than four or five people.”

“It’s always the same,” Wyatt said, a note of bitterness in his tone. “When you come right down to it no one’s got much use for a gunfighter, no matter which side of the law he’s on. That’s one reason I quit being a lawman.”

Ringo turned and looked at him out of the clearest, bluest eyes Wyatt would ever see in a long lifetime. “The way I heard it,” Ringo said, “you didn’t have much choice in the matter.”

“I guess you’re right at that,” Wyatt admitted. “I believe I mentioned that I’ve already got a murder charge hanging over me in Arizona. They should have given me a medal, but I’ve noticed that when you kill a snake, somebody always starts taking on like he was an angel. Anyway, I want to get back to Colorado before anyone ties me in with all this killing. If that happens, they’ll extradite me for sure.”

“I don’t plan to hang around here much longer than I have to myself,” Ringo said. “Someone might decide I’m not quite as dead as I should be. Curly’s the only one around here who knows me and no one believes much he says, so I don’t guess I’ve got too much to worry about there. The only one who could get me hung is you, and if you talk we’ll hang together.”

“Then I don’t reckon either one of us has got anything to worry about,’’ Wyatt said.

“I guess not,” Ringo said, stepping into the saddle. “Well, so long, Wyatt.”

“So long, Ringo.”

Wyatt stood there with the tall rocks behind him and watched Ringo ride off, turning west along the stage road toward Boot Hill. Wyatt’s own horse stood saddled and ready, but in spite of what he had told Ringo, he was in no hurry to begin the long, lonely ride back to Colorado. There was no one in Colorado who would be too anxious to see him, unless it was a cantankerous ex-dentist who might have already coughed his lungs out by now.

In any case, there was nothing he could do for Doc, and he wasn’t sure the trouble here was over yet. Not for Ringo, anyway.